MASSACRE AT BATMAN MOVIE

She dived forward in the aisle and curled up in a ball, at which point he shot someone behind her instead.

She could feel falling bullets casings singeing her forehead as he pumped bullets into people around the auditorium. She said: “He showed no emotion, he was calm and it seemed like he was playing a game, he didn’t say anything.”

Another survivor, Chris Jones, said: “First you smelled smoke and you thought it was fireworks. Then you just saw people start dropping.

“There were at least 20-30 rounds within that minute or two. You just kept hearing it ‘Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam’ non-stop.

“He didn’t have to reload, he just kept going.”

Mr Dozier added: “He must have shot 19 or 20 rounds. People were scrambling left and right. Somebody behind us, maybe a straggler, was hit. He said, ‘I am hit’. The gunman looked like The Terminator. He didn’t say anything. He was just shooting and shooting and shooting.”

Silvana Guillen, 20, said: “At first we thought it was a hoax, a joke, like ‘Oh, some guy’s coming in to scare us’. “I was so scared I didn’t know what to do, we just ducked under the seats. The hardest part was getting up and moving, doing something about it.

“Our friend tried to help a lady next to him because she got shot and he slipped in her blood and we just ran.”

Last night Auorora police chief Dan Oates said officers were on the scene within one minute of receiving “hundreds” of emergency calls.

Holmes offered no resistance as he was arrested near his white Hyundai car parked outside. He was reportedly still carrying two firearms and told officers he also had explosives stored at his home, which had been booby-trapped.

Police and the FBI later raided his home which contained “buckets of weapons” and target sheets outside with bullet holes in them.

Officers said the flat had been arranged with a network of trip wires. Mr Oates said it could take days to safely dismantle the traps.

He said Holmes was wearing “a ballistic helmet, ballistic vest, ballistic groin protector, gas mask and black tactical gloves.” He had only been known to police on one previous occasion for speeding. Last night the killer’s distraught family issued a statement saying their hearts went out to all those involved in the shootings.

Police in San Diego, where they live, read a statement on their behalf asking the media to respect their privacy.

Last night there was speculation that the University of Colorado student may have belonged to an extreme anarchist group.

The film, The Dark Knight Rises, which stars British actor Christian Bale as Batman, features armed anti-capitalist gangs going on killing sprees.

In an earlier Batman film the late Heath Ledger played the superhero’s arch rival The Joker.

The Paris premiere of the Dark Knight Rises was cancelled last night by Warner Bros. A spokesman said the firm was “deeply saddened” at the shooting.